With a powerful late race surge, American Sandra Glover capped a strong season with a successful defence of her women's 400m Hurdles World Athletics Final title.
Her 54.57 win provided a fitting conclusion to the 35-year-old Texan's season, who had but one bad day in 2004: unfortunately for her, it came at the U.S. Olympic trials, where she was fourth, thus missing a trip to Athens. Despite the disappointment, she bounced back to beat a strong field in Zurich last month and in Rovereto two weeks ago before coming here.
The first half of the race was a virtual dead heat between the Athens podium finishers - Greek Olympic Champion Fani Halkia, silver medallist Ionela Tirlea-Manolache of Romania and Ukrainian Tetyana Tereschuk-Antipova - with Glover less than a stride behind in lane three.
Antipova maintained her form off the final turn, but the Romanian was the first to falter, followed by Halkia who struggled visibly in the homestretch. Glover, who took the lead on the final turn, began to fade as well, almost slowing to a crawl in the final meters, but managed to hold off the late homestretch surge of Tereschuk-Antipova to win in 54.57 to the Ukrainian's 54.64.
Running on the outside, American Brenda Taylor, the U.S. trials runner-up and Athens finalist, burst past the fading field to finish third in 55.00, a tenth of a second ahead of Halkia. Tirlea-Manolache was further back in fifth in 55.79, her slowest performance of the year.
BR